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What will Google Wave Look Like in the Enterprise? |
| Date Added: July 14, 2009 09:39:37 PM |
| Author: Mark Fidelman |
| Category: Blogs: Business |
| A few weeks ago I wrote about why Google Wave won’t be adopted by most Enterprise users at launch. If Google Wave did work in the Enterprise they would have to begin with Outlook integration. Why? Because Outlook has a 60% share of the corporate email client market and an overall 40% share for all email users. They can’t possible get corporations to switch en masse without an Outlook beach head strategy. In order for a Wave type system to work in the enterprise it will need the following characteristics: 1. First and most importantly, it must be about solving problems related to the corporation. CIO’s are not interested in planning a weekend camping trip with your buddies in upstairs in marketing. The Wave needs to be centered on projects and issues – essentially a hub of activity where all related teams, documents, and data connections are made. I’ll expand on Data connections next. 2. Data connections to Oracle, SAP, CRM, knowledge base, etc are an important ingredient not mentioned by Google because they don’t exist yet. Let’s for example say that I launch a Wave around a major customer service issue. The enterprise customer has a system failure on a mission critical application. I get all the relevant departments involved through the Wave in solving the customer issue, but since they don’t have access to the CRM or accounting systems they don’t have a 360 degree picture of the issue. Even if they did have access, they wouldn’t know how to find the information relevant to the customer. Had the data from the CRM and accounting systems been integrated into the Wave, they would have discovered the software they were running is an unsupported version and that they are 120 days late on payment on their last invoice. If a connection with the knowledge base were made, the issue could have been solved in the Wave because the query to the Knowledge Base would have found a solution since the issue has surfaced before. 3. Governance and Security need to be addressed. You can’t as referenced in the Google Wave demo go posting Wave’s around the internet especially when they contain sensitive information. You’ll need a governance system that understands who each user is and how much access to the Wave they are given. Facebook is tackling this issue now but more importantly it needs to be addressed in an enterprise version of Wave. 4. Wave’s need to be tracked and monitored. A Second underlying value of an Enterprise Wave is the ability to learn from the result. What’s the point of solving individual issues or completing projects if you can’t reuse that information? Waves need to be stored in a knowledge management system that also serves to track the number of open and closed Waves. They must also be easily searchable, categorized and tagged (the latter 2 automatically) so that the organization can quickly access the retained knowledge. Enterprise users want the ability to re-launch a marketing project that was successful in Europe. Why recreate the wheel if the Wave contains the data (including the results since it links in the CRM data – see #2)? The Future of Wave in the Enterprise Since most Corporations still use Outlook as their work portal, any Wave system must start there. Switching day 1 will be a nearly impossible task unless Microsoft evolves Outlook to some form of Google Wave. It’s not happening in Office 2010, so don’t look for Microsoft to do it anytime soon. It will take an enterprising start-up to make the connection – any takers?. |
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